For Love’s Sake

OH, for a little while be kind to me Who stand in such imperious need of you, And for a fitful space let my head lie Happily on your passion’s frigid breast. Although yourself no more resigned to me Than on all bitter yesterdays I knew, This half a loaf from sumptuous crumbs your shy Reneging hand lets fall shall make me blest. The sturdy homage of a love that throws Its strength about you, dawn and dusk, at bed And board, is not for scorn. When all is said With final amen certitude, who knows But Dives found a matchless fragrance fled When Lazarus no longer shocked his nose?

LOVE, leave me like the light, The gently passing day; We would not know, but for the night, When it has slipped away. Go quietly; a dream, When done, should leave no trace That it has lived, except a gleam Across the dreamer’s face.

THIS much the gods vouchsafe today: That we two lie in the clover, Watching the heavens dip and sway, With galleons sailing over. This much is granted for an hour: That we are young and tender, That I am bee and you are flower, Honey-mouthed and swaying slender. This sweet of sweets is ours now: To wander through the land, Plucking an apple from its bough To toss from hand to hand. No thing is certain, joy nor sorrow, Except the hour we know it; Oh, wear my heart today; tomorrow Who knows where the winds will blow it?

SINCE little time is granted here For pride in pain or play, Since blood soon cools before that Fear That makes our prowess clay, If lips to kiss are freely met, Lad, be not proud nor shy; There are no lips where men forget, And undesiring lie.

“I ’LL tell him, when he comes,” she said, “Body and baggage, to go, Though the night be darker than my hair, And the ground be hard with snow.” But when he came with his gay black head Thrown back, and his lips apart, She flipped a light hair from his coat, And sobbed against his heart.

SHE gave her body for my meat, Her soul to be my wine, And prayed that I be made complete In sunlight and starshine. With such abandoned grace she gave Of all that passion taught her, She never knew her tidal wave Cast bread on stagnant water.

FROM death of star to new star’s birth, This ache of limb, this throb of head, This sweaty shop, this smell of earth, For this we pray, “Give daily bread.” Then tenuous with dreams the night, The feel of soft brown hands in mine, Strength from your lips for one more fight: Bread’s not so dry when dipped in wine.

“MY sweet,” you sang, and, “Sweet,” I sang, And sweet we sang together, Glad to be young as the world was young, Two colts too strong for a tether. Shall ever a spring be like that spring, Or apple blossoms as white; Or ever clover smell like the clover We lay upon that night? Shall ever your hand lie in my hand, Pulsing to it, I wonder; Or have the gods, being jealous gods, Envied us our thunder?